Blogging from the Kingdom of Shadows

Frozen

I’ve seen great survival movies like 127 HOURS and I’ve seen horrible survival movies like OPEN WATER. The one that I happened to catch on Netflix Instant last night was, shall we say, a hunk of shit. FROZEN is the story of three friends who hit the slopes in the Vermonty part of New England. Joe (Shawn Ashmore) and Dan (Kevin Zegers) are lifelong friends. On this trip to Mount Holliston, Dan’s newish girlfriend Parker (Emma Bell) tags along. It becomes blatantly clear early on in the film that Joe doesn’t care for Parker’s company and wants his bromance alone time with Dan. Dan – the poor man’s Zac Efron – just wants everyone to be happy and get along. The first of many problems that the three face together is their lack of tickets to board the ski lift.

Dan convinces Parker to use her feminine wiles to get the ski lift operator to let them on for $100. Everything is going great once they are off the ground and on their way to that fresh Vermont snow and a faceful of icey wind. Because Parker isn’t so experienced, the three spend the day on the bunny hill. When they stop for a bite to eat at the lodge, Joe tells Dan he needs to get some real time on the snow with Dan. Like they always do. Blah blah blah about Parker falling on her ass all day on the bunny hill. Together, the three venture out to the ski lift one last time only to be told that it is closing early due to a winter storm that’s moving in. If you’ve read to this point, beware that after this paragraph there will be spoilers galore. Anyway, the guys lets them up for one more run and in a series of mistakes made by slack-jawed yokels, the trio find themselves on the ski lift, at night, far from the lodge, alone.

Alright, it’s natural to think of what you might do if this were to happen to you in real life. The movie tries to make it look like this could happen to anyone, but I’m telling you right now that the very next time I go skiing I will be bundled to the teeth and I will only ski during designated hours. That being said, let’s talk about the series of bad decisions that these three dimwits make. First of all they panic. Even in the most dire situations, one mustn’t panic. This leads to bad choices. Like jumping off of a ski lift that is at least 20 feet above the ground. Dan the man – who gloated about jumping off of a ski lift once before – decides that he’ll be the one to just hop down and go get help.

Oh, Dan. Dan, Dan, Dan. Neither one of his friends really try to stop him, and he thinks that he’s just going to stick the landing and mosey on down the hill for help. And I’m like “He’s going to break both of his legs!”

So he breaks the shit out of his legs. I’m talking visible bone here, people. It’s gross. There’s no way around it. Parker and Joe throw things down to him to use as a tourniquet, but Dan doesn’t need a tourniquet. Conveniently enough, there are wolves roaming the area that will be happy to clean up the mess that Dan has made. I really think that if I were to somehow fall into the same situation that I might do the same thing that he did, but I would never be stupid enough to jump off of a ski lift. Anyway, the wolves come and surround him. He covers his eyes with his hat. Parker watches while they devour him. It’s all a bit much.

Parker and Joe remain and in an OPEN WATER style argument they bond enough to try to think logically and get out of this mess. I really start to feel for Parker the next day. This poor girl lost her boyfriend the night before, got yelled at by his best friend, and had to pee THE WHOLE TIME. Parker wakes up to her gloveless hand frozen to the safety bar on the lift. After peeling it off, she finally urinates. Then she cries.

So really, how much worse can we get? Long story short, Joe gets down without breaking both of his legs but still gets eaten by wolves. Here’s a question. Why are these wolves just lurking around all of the time? It would seem to me that this wouldn’t be such a nice place to go skiing with all of these bloodthirsty wolves and all. Parker eventually gets herself down. Does she live? I am not going to tell you. I want you to watch this movie like I did and find out for yourself. Mwahahahaha.